Under Siege
by MalTease
Summary: A story of forbidden love between a Knight and a local maiden, on a barren island besieged by the army of the Crescent Moon. AU


_**This is my first ever attempt at an AU submitted as part of the Prompts In Panem AU Challenge (Day 3). I hope you like it!**_

A story of forbidden love between a Knight and a local maiden, on a barren island besieged by the army of the Crescent Moon.

Malta – Summer 1565

"_Waqa' Sant' Iermu! Waqa' Sant'Iermu!" _I hear a familiar voice scream as I tend to the wounded in the Church of St Lawrence in Birgu, our most populated city which hosts the Grand Order of the Knights of St John, and which has been for the past four weeks under siege by the Ottoman.

Fort St Elmo has fallen. And with it Fra Mellark – _Peeta, _I correct myself forcefully. He wasn't Fra Mellark to me any more, not since that night just six weeks ago. He had come to me in the middle of the night, telling me of the garrison of forty-thousand man sailing towards our island from Constantinople, ready to fight the five hundred Knights stationed in Malta. It was a lost battle, a lost war, because even with an army of Italian and Spanish soldiers and mercenaries, as well as the thousands of Maltese volunteers who had stepped forward to assist the much detested Order, the defence did not number more than six thousand.

_I'll die in St Elmo¸_ he had sobbed in my arms. _I'll die without having showed you how much I love you... _

My strangled cry is interrupted by the sight of my friend Gale, whose voice had announced the fall of the fort just across the harbour from Birgu. He is storming into the Church, soaking wet and bloodied and carrying his younger brother, Rory, in his arms. He hands over the young man to Father Haymitch, the _kappillan _of the Birgu parish, who proceeds to lay him down on the Church floor, as he thoughtfully looks at him in silence for a few seconds. He calls my sister Primrose to come to his aid and Gale visibly deflates in relief. Father Haymitch does not bother calling a healer to a wounded person's aid if there was no hope for improvement. Had Rory been doomed, he would have stepped in himself and administered the Last Rites directly.

I turn to Gale and start questioning him urgently. "What happened Gale? How did you get out? Who survived? Who made it out of there?!"

Gale looks taken aback at the vehemence with which I bombard him with questions, but does not question my state of mind. God knows that we are all at our wit's end. "It was hell, Katniss," he tells me with a pained grimace. "Grandmaster La Valette refused to let us surrender. He would not let St Elmo fall until all lives were lost defending it. One of the captured Janissaries confessed under torture that Dragut's plan had been to capture St Elmo in a couple of days, to then take over St Angelo and St Michael within the month. La Valette used to send us reinforcements at night from across the Great Port, but in the circumstances, the fact that we managed to defend the fort for four weeks is in itself a miracle." He paused and gulped the ladle of water that Johanna, a young feisty woman from neighbouring Bormla_, _who was assisting Father Haymitch and my mother in the makeshift hospital that he set up in the Church with the hope of assistance from _San Lawrenz_.

"Only nine of us managed to swim away to safety," Gale continues after quenching his thirst. "The Knights did not make it, _their_ heavy armour cost them their lives. Obviously they overlooked the fact that they wouldn't be able to swim in armour, when they denied it to us," he explained rather smugly.

"_Biżżejjed _Gale," I growl. Enough. I cannot bear to think of Peeta drowning, pulled down by his armour, trying desperately to breathe and swim to shore ... The overwhelming emotions of terror and devastation must be showing clearly in my expression because Gale is looking at me, with a puzzled expression.

"Dragut lost eight thousand men in taking St Elmo, and I know that in the meantime, the Order has fortified St Michael and St Angelo even more. Not all is lost, Katniss," he adds, in what he thinks must be a reassuring tone.

Johanna grabs a damp cloth and wipes it across his face. I glare at her. "Water is to be used only for the cleaning and the disinfecting of wounds," I remind her sternly. "You are to wash your hands before tending to any open wound, and you are to place any metal instrument in boiling water, just as Fra Mellark teaches – _taught _us," I finish as my voice falters.

Water is scarce, damn it. It should not be wasted in wiping foreheads of young men who seem to have survived unscathed. I wince inwardly at my callousness. Gale is a dear friend, and I know that I should feel happy and relieved at his escape, but my despair at Peeta's death takes over any attempt to be the loyal friend that Gale Hawthorne has always found in me. Until now.

Johanna scowls at me and decorates her answer with a few choice Maltese swear words that seem to include a clear reference to my grandmother's private parts. I ignore her.

Tending to the wounded and the sick was the main reason behind the founding of the Order hundreds of years ago in Jerusalem, and until the invasion of the Turks, Peeta was the Knight who managed the infirmary in Birgu as Chief Surgeon. Since the invasion in May, however, the Knights have been too busy fighting to tend to their wounded, and Peeta had to let go of his medicine and gauzes to grab a sword and fight for the freedom of a land that is not his home, while forming a part of an Order he had not wanted to join, and which he does not really believe in.

In fact, Fra Mellark, a Knight in the Order of St John since he turned eighteen five years ago, was chosen and promised to the Order by his parents immediately following his birth. This is a common practice in most European noble families whose wealth and land do not provide an inheritance to the second son. The younger sons are either sent off for priesthood in Rome, or are promised at birth to the Order to fight the enemies of the Cross, and to heal the wounded and the sick in the name of God. I met him a year ago, when he was brought to my mother by Fra O'dair for the treatment of severe sunburn. My mother had applied salve to his fair skin, which in the first few days of his arrival to Malta had turned bright red and was punctured with painful boils. She also gently and reverently reminded him to always wear his feathered hat while walking the streets in the hot hours, at least until his pale skin got used to the scorching sun that burns our islands for most of the year.

To everyone's surprise, he had been respectful and grateful to my mother, and had even joked on the blessings of the Maltese in having such strong, _beautiful, _dark skin. I had tried to ignore the fact that he was glancing at me shyly while making that statement. In fact, I had looked away and reminded myself of all the reasons why I hated him and all that he represented with his black tunic and the white eight-pointed cross sewn upon it. The Knights of the Order of St John ruled over us Maltese with an iron hand that bordered on cruelty. They did not speak to us except to order us, to make us move out of the way, or to condemn us to a public flogging. They do not speak our language, but as with every ruler that took over our islands since the dawn of history, we were expected to know theirs. This is both unfair and ridiculous. Many Maltese did not have the means or opportunity to learn to speak any of the eight languages of the eight different Langues making the order. However, I do speak a spattering of French, just enough to communicate with him. Besides being the local healer, my mother was also the bastard child of a French Knight who regarded the vow of chastity in the Order with enough frivolity to visit a local prostitute enough times to conceive her. Surprisingly, my "grandfather" had somehow managed to keep some contact with his daughter, and through his sporadic visits during her childhood she learnt enough French to be able to get by with the Knights that represented the Langue of Provence, like Fra Mellark and Fra O'Dair. She has also inherited his light eyes, which she has passed on, together with her aptitude as a healer, to my younger sister Primrose. I am proud to say that I inherited no sign of French nobility, and am happily and thoroughly Maltese from head to toe.

I am short and dark with the regular strong features of the Mediterranean race. There is nothing remarkable about me, but as all islanders, I come alive with the sea and the sun. In fact, Prim often remarks that I look radiant after a swim, glistening wet with the clear droplets of water covering my body as I reflect the sun's rays. We Maltese have been conquered by many different peoples through our history, who have also sought to leave a trace of them behind. My mother says I look Phoenician, while she says that Gale looks Greek. However in my opinion, with our dark looks and grey eyes, we just seem to look the same.

On the other hand, Fra Mellark has always managed to turn a number of heads whenever he walks around the streets of Birgu, not only because he is courteous and polite to us natives, but also because his pale skin and ash blonde hair are a true novelty in this land. Fra Mellark seems to carry around the sun with him, and I know that many local girls have very often wished that he did not follow the vows of Obedience and Chastity so rigorously.

I never admit to anyone that I have carried that same desire ever since meeting him.

Following our first meeting however, and to my secret, and very confused, delight, Fra Mellark began to regularly visit our small apothecary shop, always finding a very valid excuse to do so. At first it started off by wanting to thank Mother for the "miraculous" salve, followed by a desire to discuss indigenous healing herbs, and to share advice on the proper administration of medical care, including the highly controversial, and in our eyes excessive, use of water in a land that does not experience any sort of rainfall from early May to late August.

It was not long before it became clear to both of us that our desire to spend time together was not merely the result of a mutual interest in medical care, especially since in my case, my talent in healing was rudimentary at best. Our walks became longer, our gazes more lingering, and our quiet moments more intimate, but Fra Mellark was very careful in not causing any sort of suspicion to befall upon us. His behaviour with me was always impeccable, and he was well aware of the punishments inflicted by Grandmaster Jean Parisot de la Valette if he were to discover any sort of questionable relationship between one of his Knights and a native girl.

All caution was thrown to the wind though when la Valette decided that God was asking Fra Mellark to volunteer to defend St Elmo. That night he became Peeta to me as we clung to each other desperately on the cliffs in Dingli that, tasting each others tears in our frantic kisses.

_I try to regain my breath as Peeta holds me tight, his beating heart echoing mine in unison. Both our bare bodies are wet with shared tears and a layer of sweat, but the air is damp with humidity so I welcome his cloak around me. The cross that is sewn to it, however reminds me of the battle that is approaching, and of the almost certain death that awaits Peeta in the coming weeks._

_I finger one of the eight points in the cross, curiously tracing its shape as the cloak lies carelessly across his chest. _

"_Which point is yours?" I ask curiously. He looks at me in confusion. "Which one represents your home?" I ask again, trying to make myself a bit clearer. _

_He smiles and latches his fingers with mine. "Oh just choose a point and that will be Provence," he replies as he traces my face with kisses, grinning, "but make sure to make it far off from the point of Catalunya. We don't like each other much."_

_I smile at his joke and shift on the hard ground on which we had given ourselves to each other. Dingli Cliffs, majestic and high over the crystal waters of our sea, were a favourite haunt of my father as well as mine. I never thought I'd bring anyone with me here, let alone a Knight, and actually one with whom I had fallen so deeply in love. As the moon rises high into the sky, reflecting in the calm sea, I find myself clutching Peeta even closer, desperate to find out more about his home, after I had shared so much of mine._

"_Do you miss your land?" I ask him quietly._

_He takes a moment to answer. "There isn't the sea in Provence, or this sky...or you. Back home I could have never been a surgeon so I am glad I came to Malta. But the only thing I will miss when I die will be you," he tells me, looking at me sadly._

_I shake my head stubbornly. "Don't talk like that," I tell him angrily, "you can't be sure that you will –"_

"_Katniss, I'm being sent to St Elmo," he cuts in urgently. He grabs my face gently, forcing me to look at him. "No one will come out of St Elmo, and we both need to make our peace with it," his voice breaks at this and he looks down, his eyes bright with the many tears that still need to be shed._

"_But you're a surgeon, maybe you won't have to fight…" _

_He smiles sadly at me and shakes his head. "I will sew up people until I can," he replies. "When I run out of people to fix, then I will have to fight like the rest of them."_

_There is not much that I can say after that. _

He had walked me back to my hut at dawn, and left me with a kiss and a promise of love. I remember being scared of pregnancy when I was able to once again think clearly, but now, as my world falls apart together with the rubble of St Elmo, I almost wish that Peeta and I had conceived a child that night, and that I could have been blessed with a part of him that I could still carry with me.

If I survive the siege, of course. Personally, I don't think any of us will. All the inhabitants of our sister island, Gozo, had been dragged to slavery by the Ottoman a few years ago. With the way things are going now, the same outcome is looking very very likely.

Gale gives his brother one last look, and impulsively kisses a startled Johanna before enveloping me into a hug. "Where are you going?" I ask him fearfully.

"They have turned on _San Mikiel_ now," he replies grimly, "if it falls, _Sant Anġlu _will follow, and then it will be all over." With a final look at Johanna, he rushes out of the Church and I wonder if I will ever see him again.

To the amazement of everyone, except perhaps for la Valette, in early September Fort St Michael and Fort St Angelo are still holding the Turks out. However, things are looking so bad that the Nobles in the fortified hilltop village of Medina have started to come out from their self imposed slumber and are now becoming concerned. So concerned in fact, that a few days ago they swallowed their pride and extended a plea for help to the hated Order to send a few of their Knights to organise the defence of their fortifications. La Valette had replied by sending a handful of Knights who had been wounded so badly as to be unable to be of much use in Birgu, and had ordered Father Haymitch to send a few of his volunteers to tend to the possible wounded if the Ottomans decide to strike there.

Both Father Haymitch and the Grandmaster seemed to relish on the idea of having an elderly Count being treated by a teenage Maltese peasant, and I was sent on my way to Medina late in August.

As I settle down to start a makeshift hospital tent in the Medina square, I catch a glimpse of a fair head pouring over a parchment showing detailed plans of the battlements that need to be defended. I scream his name out before I can stop myself. One of the Knights assigned to the defence of the Citta Nobile is Fra Mellark. Our eyes meet across the square.

Between frenzied kisses and vice like embraces in one of the dark alleys surrounding the square, I notice that he is sporting a wooden leg. As he tells me about the battles in Birgu I also realise that he also carries with him a chasm in his soul that cannot be cured by any medicine. I see it in his eyes as he describes to me the atrocities he saw in the Great Port, where headless knights were crucified on wooden crosses and sent floating to St Angelo, and Turkish prisoners were beheaded in retaliation with their heads used as cannon balls by an equally vicious la Valette.

"But how did you manage to survive _Sant' Iermu_?" I ask breathlessly, "they said that all the Knights had perished, I thought you had drowned!"

"The son of the Viceroy of Sicily was injured during an assault a couple of days before Saint Elmo fell," he explains. "La Valette thought that if we were to save his life, the Viceroy would finally send the reinforcements we needed," he adds with a wry smile. "I'm the Order's best surgeon, so I was smuggled through the port and spent the following few weeks tending to his wounds. It was all for nought though, the reinforcements never came," he finishes dispiritedly.

"Don't say that," I whisper into his neck, "you came back. I need you Fra Mellark."

He smiles that shy smile of his, and for a second, his eyes regain the playful light that I had grown to love. I love him, and he's alive. The realisation fills me with a wave of pure, raw and overwhelming joy.

"When this is all over, and it _will _be over soon, I'm coming back to you Ms Everdeen," he promises solemnly, punctuating his words with warm kisses. "I will leave the Order, and –"

His words are interrupted by a loud banging on the wooden gates of Medina. A servant is hurriedly pulled inside before the gates are barred again. "_Waslu t-Torok," _he sputtered breathlessly, pointing at the distant barren plains.

Peeta does not need to know much Maltese to understand. "How far away are they?" he asks urgently.

"About two or three hours away," the lad replies. "There are few hundred of them, more than we can possibly handle."

Peeta glares at him. "That is not for you to decide," he replies coldly. I have never seen this side of him before. It is not entirely … unpleasant. He jumps onto a low lying wall in the square and calls for all the citizens, mainly made up of the noble class and their servants, to assemble. His eyes scan the crowd critically, taking in the old people, the children, women, and I can already imagine what is going on his mind. _Useless._

However, he surprises me. "I want the men to chop off any wood you might have stored in your cellars into thin sticks," he commands authoritatively, "the women are to bring back here all possible scraps of black and white material. The children are to fashion white crosses and help out by sewing them to the black cloths. Smaller hands make faster sewing. There is no time to lose. Go. NOW!"

The minute the words are out of his mouth I understand his plan. There are less than ten Knights defending Medina, and all of them crippled and unable to fight. But the Turks do not know that. He is planning to disguise the citizens as knights, and fashion their wooden sticks to look like guns as they stand on the fortifications and point them at the enemy. It is a brilliant plan. And … it could actually work.

The crowd disperses and I turn to leave with the women when he grabs my hand. "Lead the women," he whispers urgently, "I trust you. This is our only hope."

It _was _our only hope. The plan worked and we were saved. Later that day an army of Janissaries were seen riding up the hill towards _Mdina_, only to stop abruptly at the sigh of hundreds of black cloaks with white crosses that stood proudly on the fortifications and pointed guns at them.

The Viceroy's men, eight thousand of them, disembarked that same evening. _Il Grande Soccorso _had begun.

On the 8th of September 1565, the Siege ended and a day later, the first rains washed the blood from our island. On the same day that Grandmaster la Valette declared his intention to build a new fortress city on Mount Xiberras which would bear his name, Fra Peeta Mellark announced his intention and desire to leave the Order.

His request was met with a public whipping in the square of Birgu, and the tearing of his robe in disgrace by his fellow Knights. La Valette official goodbye to him was a hard slap in the face and the reminder to "forever live with his shame". I don't think Peeta cared much at that point, and as soon as the Grandmaster turned away he was already in my arms, requesting a kiss even as he bled profusely from the oozing welts on his bare back. Fra O'Dair helped me carry him away from the square and squeezed my hand tightly before turning away from both of us and following the Grandmaster.

La Valette must have underestimated the actual joy of living with our shame, because I don't think that Peeta and I can possibly be happier in our life together. Fra Mellark exists no more, instead it is just Peeta Mellark who takes his place, tending to his small herbal garden and trading medical care for anything that his customers will bring him. From the very beginning of his new life outside the Order, he manages to integrate within the community with unsurprising ease and his first attempts to speak Maltese while still sporting his beautiful accent are adorable. I try to teach him at first, but during our second lesson we probably end up conceiving our son. Very soon, Peeta starts to take lessons from Father Haymitch, since we both agree that my lessons are just too enjoyable and distracting to be of any linguistic benefit. Gale remains distrustful of him, still seeing him as a Knight of the Order, but I know that Johanna will make him change his mind. He's still too giddy with love and happiness to oppose any of her opinions.

Within less than a few years from our marriage, Peeta's head of golden curls is accompanied in the streets of Birgu by the second, tiny blonde head of our son. To my dismay, he shares his father's pale skin, which means that I have to make sure that he is kept out of the sun as much as possible during the scorching summer months. Luqa is like me however, and he will not be kept indoors, so many times he just toddles around following his father as they wear identical hats and white shirts to protect them from sunburn. Father Haymitch has already cast him as an angel in every year's Christmas pageant, and he is cuddled and fawned upon far too much by all the women in the neighbourhood. I don't really mind though, as it takes away the attention from my husband.

Peeta never hears from the Order or his family ever again, and he never mentions either of them, but sometimes I catch him singing soft lullabies in French as he cuddles our son at night. The songs speak about meadows, but since I have never seen one in my life, I don't really know what they look like. I also see him gaze across the port towards the new city Valletta, that is slowly being built, his fists clenched together, fighting the nightmares that sometimes seem to haunt him even during the day. I ask him sometimes whether he misses the life as a surgeon with the Order, but I know he doesn't. I ask him on those days when I'm feeling particularly _affectionate_ towards him, and without fail, he makes sure that I know just how much he passionately loves me. One night, after a particularly enthusiastic demonstration of our love to each other, he holds me tight to him, and whispers,

"_Int tђobbni. Veru jew mhux veru?"_

And without hesitation I reply, _"veru"._

_**For a truly beautiful and well written story set during the Great Siege of Malta, I suggest the book "**__**The Sword and the Scimitar**__**" (published in the US as Iron Fire I think) by David Ball.**_

_**If you would like to see pictures of the places I mention, visit Prompts in panem dot tumblr dot com and look out for the story as it is published there :). **_


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